Surgical Wound Irrigation: Strategy for Prevention of Surgical Site Infection

A recent prevalence study found that surgical site infections (SSI) were the most common healthcare-associated infection (HAI), accounting for 31% of all HAIs among hospitalized patients [1]. The World Health Organization (WHO) report on the global burden of endemic HAI-SSI incidence was 11.8 per 100 surgical patients undergoing surgical procedures (95% CI: 8.6–16.0) and 5.6 per 100 surgical procedures (95% CI: 2.9-10.5) [2]. SSI extends the postoperative hospitalization by an average of 9.7 days and increased health care and costs of US $ 20,842 [3]. In Mexico; in the years 2014 and 2015, the Department of Epidemiology of Health reported that there were 15 incidents of surgical site infection in 100 entries, the mortality was 25.5%, the additional hospital stay ranged from 7 to 20.7 days, and the unit costs per episode was more than USD 6,005 per episode [3,4].